Search This Blog

Should blogs be censored?

Although this is now my 'real' blog, I started blogging elsewhere, on Nature Network (and I still occasionally post here at my old blog, where it's a purely sciencey topic). Nature Network is an excellent environment for people in the science arena to share information, set up by company behind the world's leading science journal.

However, recently, a Nature Network blogger has been censored. One of his posts was pulled by the management. Ironically, it was a post that was inspired by the current attempt by the British Chiropractic Association to sue Simon Singh for libel because he referred to a claim as bogus.

I have seen the original post, and I can see why the management was nervous. It mentions several individuals, mostly big name scientists, who are either trading on their name to make money on products that make dubious scientific claims, or leading people astray (in the blogger's opinion). However, it's worth saying that the suggestions that worried the management have all been made elsewhere (one of them on this blog), especially on Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science blog.

On the one hand, I can see that the management at Nature Network don't want trouble for themselves or for the blogger in question - but equally this seems to play into the hands of those who want to use the UK's outrageous libel laws to suppress science and personal opinion. There is a campaign to get this changed - you can sign a petition to this effect and read more about it here.

If Nature Network's actions interest you, you can see the reactions of the bemused blogger here, the response of the NN management here (and it's rumoured you can see the original post here).

Comments

Brian, a correction to one of your statements, that Nature Network was "set up by the world's leading science journal." Not so, Nature Network is on the nature.com platform, but other than sharing that platform, it has no editorial connection with the journal Nature. Some Nature journal staff use Nature Network (myself included) but NN is an independent product, with its own editor (Corie Lok) and publisher (Timo Hannay). (Nature's publisher is Steven Inchcoombe and its chief editor Philip Campbell.)

Happy to clarify. Nature Publishing Group is the company that owns Nature (the journal) and Nature Network (a free social networking website for scientists), and many other journals and products.

That is, Nature Network was set up by Nature Publishing Group, the company, and not by Nature, the journal.

I suppose an analogy would be to say that if Sky TV launched a new channel, one would not write, "Sky TV, set up by the Times, launches a new channel...." just because they are both owned and produced by the same company.

I think the confusion re Nature/Nature Publishing Group is the word "Nature" which crops up in both names. You are not the only person to find these distinctions puzzling!

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps.

Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think).

That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope? I…

The budget airline Easyjet got a lot of publicity recently by announcing that it had formed a partnership with Wright Electric, a firm hoping to make electric airliners. But was this impressive forward thinking and environmental planning on behalf of Easyjet, or a lavish splash of greenwash?

There is a huge problem with making an electric airliner (as opposed to a very lightweight, short range, small electric plane). Kerosene - aviation fuel - is brilliant at packing in energy. Against a conventional lithium ion battery, kerosene stores away around 100 times as much energy per unit weight. So to replace, say, 50 tonnes of fuel would require 5,000 tonnes of batteries.
Don't get me wrong. Battery technology is improving all the time - and that ratio will get significantly better. But the 10 year timescale that Easyjet was talking about seems impossibly short to achieve that kind of improvement in energy density. It may be possible eventually, but we're talking a revolutionary t…

Don't get me wrong - I'm no Trump supporter. But his anti-climate change stance could provide the pressure that's needed to get a meaningful plan put in place to tackle this pressing world problem.

A while ago, a website labelled me a green heretic, by which they meant that I thought it essential we use science, technology and economics to tackle green issues, rather than relying on fluffy bunny, feel-good gestures. I was delighted. We need more green heresy - and I think Trump could be the stimulus to make this happen.

Climate change is real and a huge threat to the future population of the world - I'm sorry, deniers, but the science is solid, it's only the models dealing with how fast it will hurt us that are subject to question. It will be a disaster unless we do something about it. (I ought to say, though, that you needn't worry about saving the planet. The Earth itself will shrug whatever we do off in a few million years. It really doesn't care. This …